Chapter I (part 3/4)

Ethnic Conflicts in the Caucasus 1988-1994

3. Ethnic Conflicts in Georgia (1989-1994)

Abkhazia (Apsny, "a Country of the Soul" in the Abkhaz language,
Abkhazeti in Georgian), an autonomous republic in Georgia
situated on the Black Sea coast, had, as of 1 January 1990, a
population of 537,000, of which 44% were Georgians, 17% Abkhaz,
16% Russians and 15% Armenians.(53) The Abkhaz are a people close
in language and origin to the North Caucasian peoples of the
Adyghe group. Although they lived under Turkish rule from the
late 15th to the early 19th centuries and some of them were
converted to Islam during that period, there are few Moslems now
left in Abkhazia. The Abkhaz population underwent
Christianization in the late 19th century, under Russian rule.
The territory of the present-day republic was once part of
Ancient Rome, Byzantium and Persia. Later, Arabs, Genoese
colonists, Turks and Russians sought to control it. Until
Abkhazia's absorption by Russia in 1810, Abkhazian rulers were in
nominal or effective vassalage or union with various (although
often separate) Georgian kingdoms and princedoms. So the
historical evidence is ambiguous: both unity with Georgia and
autonomy can be argued on historical grounds.

On 31 March 1921, an independent Soviet Socialist Republic
of Abkhazia was proclaimed. Abkhazia kept that status until
December 1921, when the SSR Abkhazia joined the Georgian SSR
under a Treaty of Union. This status lasted until 1931, when the
Abkhazian Republic was incorporated into Georgia as an autonomy
(the Abkhazian ASSR). The Georgian side, contradicting Abkhaz
claims, denies that these changes of status were made under
pressure.

Abkhaz authors lay particular emphasis on their people's
plight in Stalin's era. Stalinist repression hit Abkhazia like
the rest of the USSR, but here it had an additional ethnic
colouring, as it was carried out by Georgians. From the late
1930s to the early 1950s, a policy of the Georgianization of
Abkhazia and its native people was in progress. The tragedy
suffered by the Abkhaz during the Russian conquest in the 19th
century - the forced emigration to Turkey of the Moslem sector of
the Abkhaz population who had inhabited half the Abkhazian
territory - was compounded by a Georgian policy, conducted in
Stalin's times, of planned resettlement of Georgians into
Abkhazia. The Abkhaz intellectuals and party leaders repeatedly
(in 1956, 1967 and 1978) petitioned the Centre to separate
Abkhazia from Georgia and attach it to Russia. In response to
this pressure, the Centre made a number of concessions to the
Abkhaz in personnel and cultural policy. Thus, by 1988, Abkhazia
had its own radio and TV, which were outside Tbilisi's control.
Abkhaz party cadres represented a prominent - and, in Georgian
eyes, disproportionate - proportion of the republic's
administrative personnel. Nevertheless, the fact that the Abkhaz
- a people with two thousand years of recorded history - were
reduced by that history to 17% of the republic's population, and
were enduring what they viewed as the smouldering enmity of the
less tolerant part of the Georgian population towards their
national aspirations, was taking its toll. Niko Chavchavadze, a
Georgian MP and director of the Institute of Philosophy, writing
in 1994, recalled that only a minority of Georgian intellectuals
were prepared to take Abkhaz interests into account, as they
feared for Georgia's territorial integrity.(54) In 1989, the
objective of the Abkhaz separatists, as a first step towards
complete independence from Georgia, was to secure a return to the
status of Abkhazia prior to 1931.(55)

As of 1989, the autonomous oblast of South Ossetia within
Georgia had a population of nearly 100,000, of whom 66.2% were
Ossetes and 29% Georgians.(56) Half of the families in the region
were of mixed Georgian-Ossetian descent. The Ossetes are
descendants of the ancient Alan tribes of Iranian stock. Some of
them are Orthodox Christians and some (in certain regions of
North Ossetia) are Moslems. On 20 April 1922, after the
Sovietization of Georgia in 1921, the South Ossetian Autonomous
Oblast (AO) was formed. Georgian-Ossetian strife dates back to
1918-21, when the Menshevik government of Georgia ruthlessly (the
Ossetes say: genocidally) suppressed a Bolshevik-supported South
Ossetian insurgency (the Ossetes were largely landless peasants,
living on lands owned by Georgian aristocrats). South Ossetian
leaders, such as Torez Kulumbegov, claimed that South Ossetia was
the only autonomous entity in the USSR whose population was now
lower in absolute numbers than before the 1917 revolution.(57)
Even if this is an exaggeration (the data available to us for
1897 and 1926 do not bear it out), a Soviet demographic
dictionary confirms that the AO's population had decreased in
1984 (98,000 inhabitants) by comparison with 1939 (106,000).(58)
The decrease might be explained partly by heavy losses in World
War II and partly by the resettlement of South Ossetes (on orders
from the Kremlin) on former Ingush lands after the Ingush
deportation in 1944. According to Kulumbegov, Ossetes in the AO
were barred from entering higher education establishments and
restricted in filling administrative posts, a fact the Georgians
deny. Georgian writers have claimed that, like the Abkhazian
ASSR, the South Ossetian AO had been formed by the Bolsheviks to
create permanent sources of tension, so as to enable the Kremlin
to control Georgia more easily. Both Abkhazia and South Ossetia
were said to be run on an ethnocratic basis, to the detriment of
Georgian national interests.(59) Hence the perceived Georgian need
to curtail if not abolish these autonomous entities. The response
from the South Ossetes was either to try to secure federal status
within Georgia or, failing that, to seek to be reunited with
North Ossetia, forming part of Russia.(60)

The 9 April 1989 Tragedy and the Abkhazian Question

On 18 March 1989, an Abkhaz assembly in the village of Lykhny
proposed that Abkhazia should secede from Georgia and that the
status of a Union republic be restored to it. 30 thousand
participants in the Lykhny assembly - including all the party and
government leaders of the ASSR, but also five thousand Armenians,
Greeks, Russians and even Georgians - signed an appeal published
in all local papers on 24 March, stating their position on the
causes of the conflict as outlined above.

Georgian outrage at the Abkhaz demands was expressed in
unsanctioned meetings organized by "informal movements" across
the republic, which combined anti-communist and anti-Soviet
slogans with calls to "punish" the Abkhaz and abolish their
autonomy. Especially active in these meetings (the 12,000-strong
meeting in Gali on 25 March, Leselidze on 1 April, Sukhumi and
other cities) was Abkhazia's Georgian population. The
long-suppressed Georgian yearning for independence became
irrepressible after the violent outcome of the Tbilisi hunger
strike and demonstrations of early April 1989. These
demonstrations, prompted by the Lykhny meeting, started out under
anti-Abkhaz slogans, but quickly acquired a broader,
pro-independence character. On 9 April they were brutally
dispersed by Soviet (Russian) troops (21 people, mostly girls and
old women, were killed with sharpened digging tools and toxic
gas).

In Moscow, besides causing loud public outcry, the bloody
incident led to lengthy recriminations among the party and
military elite over who should take the blame for the event. The
debates were especially heated at the first Congress of the USSR
People's Deputies (May-June 1989).(61) Gorbachev disclaimed all
responsibility, shifting it on the army. The revelations in the
liberal Soviet media as well as the findings of the
"pro-perestroika" Deputy Anatoli Sobchak's commission of enquiry
into the Tbilisi events, made known at the second Congress in
December 1989, resulted in a massive "loss of face" by the Soviet
hardliners and army leadership implicated in the event.(62) After
that, the army was gripped by the so-called "Tbilisi syndrome":
an unwillingness to involve itself in internal military ventures
of any kind, much less ethnic feuds.

A session of the Georgian Supreme Soviet, held on 17-18
November 1989, officially condemned Soviet Russia's infringement
of the Russo-Georgian Treaty of 7 May 1920 in annexing Georgia in
February 1921, thus paving the way for the republic's
independence. Politically, in the wake of the events of 9 April
Georgia was almost left alone by the Union Centre; the latter was
quite content to see the republic in the throes of ethnic
conflicts. However, there is not enough evidence, in our view, to
suggest that the Centre actually engineered these conflicts. At
most, it can be said that, as they flared up for local reasons
and in pursuance of local interests, the Centre used them to its
own advantage.

By the second half of 1989, as news of chauvinistic
pronouncements and policies by Georgian politicians became known,
a rift appeared between the Georgian nationalists and Russian
democrats, after Andrei Sakharov wrote his passage where he
described the Union republics (including Georgia) as "minor
empires".(63) This drew a
storm of protest in Georgian political
circles.

Conflicts in Abkhazia: 1989 - End of 1991

The dynamics of the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict were influenced by a
number of factors: the extreme positions taken by Georgian
nationalists in 1989 (no to Abkhazian autonomy); Gamsakhurdia's
chauvinism; the Abkhaz leadership's reliance on hardline forces
in Russia, and the autonomist movement in the North Caucasus. The
situation was further complicated by the break-up of the USSR and
the continued instability in Georgia after the fall of
Gamsakhurdia (in particular, the Zviadist insurgency in Megrelia
and divisions in the Georgian leadership on the subject of
Abkhazia).

On 15-16 July 1989, intercommunal violence erupted in the
city of Sukhumi over the establishment of a department of Tbilisi
State University in the city. The Georgian part of Sukhumi
University refused to stay as long as Abkhaz and Russian
lecturers remained there. The Abkhaz then attacked a school which
was expected to house the Georgian university. At that time,
neither side was strong enough to force the issue militarily. The
battles between the Georgians and the Abkhaz over the Abkhazian
question were relegated to the legislatures of the two republics.

In August 1990, the Georgian Supreme Soviet passed an
election law banning regionally-based parties from taking part in
elections to the Georgian parliament.(64) This was intended, in
part, to prevent the Abkhaz Aydgylara (Unification) movement (the
Abkhaz People's Forum) from fielding its candidates. On 25 August
1990, Abkhaz delegates to the Abkhazian Supreme Soviet,
separately from their Georgian colleagues, passed a Declaration
on the Sovereignty of Abkhazia. Justification for the move was
provided by the adoption by the Georgian Supreme Soviet, in
1989-1990, of legislation annulling all the treaties concluded by
the Soviet Georgian government since February 1921 which had
served as a legal foundation for the existence of the Georgian
autonomies - those of Ajaria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The
Abkhaz declaration was annulled by the Georgian Supreme Soviet a
few days later.

After Gamsakhurdia's Round Table bloc had won the Georgian
parliamentary elections in October 1990, the Abkhazian Supreme
Soviet started on a course of defying Gamsakhurdia's authority.
In December 1990, Vladislav Ardzinba, whom the Georgian leaders
had accused of fanning Abkhaz separatism and of belonging to the
Soyuz Group - a group of hardline deputies to the Soviet
parliament - was elected chairman of the Abkhazian Supreme
Soviet. At the same session, the Abkhazian parliament voted to
prepare a draft law on new parliamentary elections.(65)

In March 1991, Gamsakhurdia issued an "Appeal to the
Abkhazian People". While professing respect for the age-old
friendship between the Georgians and the Abkhaz, he called
Ardzinba a "traitor" and a tool in the hands of Moscow. For his
part, Ardzinba declared that the Abkhazian parliament still
considered Abkhazia part of the USSR, while the newly issued
draft of the Union treaty granted equal rights to Union and
autonomous republics; finally, the Georgian parliament had
enacted a law on the prefects (published on 27 April 1991) which
violated Abkhazian constitutional rights.(66)

In defiance of a Georgia-wide ban on its holding imposed by
Gamsakhurdia, Abkhazia voted in the referendum on the
preservation of the Union, which was held on 17 March 1991. 52.4%
of the electorate took part, with a 98.4% "yes" vote.(67)
Gamsakhurdia threatened to disband the Abkhazian Supreme Soviet
and abolish the Abkhazian autonomy.

In a counter-move, Ardzinba arranged for the redeployment of
a Russian airborne assault battalion from the Baltic republics to
Sukhumi. The battalion has been quartered in Sukhumi ever since,
while Ardzinba has established friendly contacts with the Russian
military.(68) A reinforced
Russian military presence compelled
Gamsakhurdia to make concessions and allow the elections to the
Abkhazian parliament to proceed on a quota basis: 28 seats to the
Abkhaz, 26 to the Georgians and 11 to all the remaining ethnic
groups. The elections were duly held, in two stages, in
October-December 1991.

Conflicts in South Ossetia, 1989-92

In contrast to Abkhazia - whose autonomous status was only
briefly challenged in Georgia in 1989, while the Abkhaz were
mostly considered to be an autochtonous people - the Ossetes were
regarded as relative newcomers to Georgian land and their claims
were, in Georgian eyes, even less valid than those of the Abkhaz.
Even the term "South Ossetia" has been "wiped out" of Georgian
publications and replaced with "Samachablo" (Land of the
Machabeli, from the name of the Georgian feudal family which
allegedly ruled it), Shida Kartli (Inner Kartli) or, later, the
Tskhinvali region.(69) South
Ossetia's geographical position (a
mountainous region surrounded on three sides by Georgian
settlements) made the Ossetes more vulnerable than the Abkhaz in
the event of hostilities.

Conflicts in South Ossetia became a political issue as a
result of an attempt by the South Ossetian Supreme Soviet to
upgrade the status of the AO. On 10 November 1989, it approved a
decision to transform the AO into the South Ossetian ASSR, which
would form part of Georgia. In a day, the Georgian parliament
revoked the South Ossetian parliament's decision. The first stage
of the conflict lasted from November 1989 to January 1990, and
started with a march of more than 20,000 Georgians to Tskhinvali,
organized on 23 November 1989 by Gamsakhurdia and the Georgian CP
leader, Givi Gumbaridze, "to defend the Georgian population". The
marchers were prevented from entering the town by the armoured
cars of the Soviet Ministry of the Interior. Some of the Georgian
paramilitary troops stayed in nearby Georgian villages, engaging
in clashes with the Ossetian population. The first blood was
spilt. Talks between Gamsakhurdia and his Ossetian counterpart,
General Kim Tsagolov, brought no result. Gamsakhurdia was quoted
as saying to Tsagolov: "I shall bring a 200,000-strong army. Not
a single Ossete will remain in the land of Samachablo. I demand
that the Soviet flags be removed!"(70) The conflict stabilized in
1990, largely thanks to differences within the Georgian national
movement. A number of parties that later formed the National
Congress (e.g., Giorgi Chanturia's National Democratic Party of
Georgia, the NDPG) criticized the role played by the parties
allied to Gamsakhurdia in ethnic crises. An Ossetian source
quotes Chanturia as saying: "It was a great mistake to go to
Tskhinvali, and a double one to return".(71)

On 26 April 1990, the USSR Supreme Soviet passed a law
providing for a notable enhancement of the rights of Soviet
autonomies. By so doing, the Centre encouraged the autonomies to
fight for their sovereignty against the majority in some
multinational Union republics striving for independence (Moldova,
Georgia). But instead of giving the autonomies effective
protection, it merely played them against the nationalistic
currents in those republics, thus paving the way for political
and military interference in their affairs by the Kremlin.(72)

The August 1990 ban preventing regional parties from running
for election for the Georgian parliament, mentioned above in
connection with Abkhazia, was likewise aimed at preventing South
Ossetia's Adamon Nykhas (Popular Assembly) movement from taking
part in the Georgian election. The South Ossetian Oblast Soviet
countered the move by declaring the oblast the South Ossetian
Soviet Democratic Republic (YuOSDR) and appealing to Moscow to
recognize it as an independent subject of the Soviet
federation.(73) South
Ossetia boycotted the October elections to
the Georgian parliament.

After Gamsakhurdia's Round Table bloc won the elections in
Georgia in October 1990, he declared that the autonomies in
Georgia would be preserved. Nevertheless, on 9 December 1990
elections were held to the Supreme Soviet of the YuOSDR. On 11
December, the Supreme Soviet of Georgia reneged on the earlier
promise and adopted a law abolishing the South Ossetian autonomy.
The next day, the Kremlin imposed a state of emergency in the
Ossetian-populated districts of South Ossetia. Chanturia
described Gamsakhurdia's decision to abolish the South Ossetian
autonomy as politically unjustified and premature until Georgia
became fully independent, as the Kremlin might use it to foment
national discord.(74) Still
in December 1990, Georgia started a
blockade of South Ossetia which lasted until the end of July
1992. During the night of 6 January, Georgian police and
paramilitary, Alsatians on the leash, entered Tskhinvali and
carried out violent reprisals against the defenceless population,
supposedly in search of arms. On 7 January, Gorbachev issued a
decree repealing both the South Ossetian Supreme Soviet's
decision to proclaim a secessionist republic and its Georgian
counterpart's abolition of the South Ossetian autonomy. He
ordered the two sides to withdraw all military formations -
except those of the USSR Ministry of the Interior - from South
Ossetia within three days.(75) The Georgian Supreme Soviet defied
the order, and nothing happened. On 16 January, Rafik Nishanov,
President of the Chamber of Nationalities of the USSR Supreme
Soviet, paid a visit to Georgia. The result appeared to be a
compromise between the higher Soviet and Georgian authorities:
Georgia was supposed to acknowledge that its police was
subordinated to the Soviet Ministry of the Interior, in return
for an opportunity to deal with South Ossetia as it saw fit.
That, in Ossetian eyes, signalled a go-ahead for more terror. The
presence of Georgian policemen in Tskhinvali continued until
early February 1991 when, by agreement with the South Ossetian
authorities, they withdrew from the blockaded city.

On 29 January 1991, the chair of the Supreme Soviet of South
Ossetia, Torez Kulumbegov, was arrested in the presence of
Russian officers during talks with Georgian authorities. The
South Ossetian public was angry that the central government took
no steps to ensure his liberation. In a Tbilisi jail, Kulumbegov
was kept together with Mkhedrioni leader Jaba Ioseliani, arrested
by Gamsakhurdia in February 1991.(76) The YuOSDR took part in the
all-Union referendum of 17 March 1991 on the fate of the Union,
boycotted by Georgia, and ignored the Georgian referendum on
independence held on 31 March of the same year. At the Union
referendum, South Ossetes voted 99 per cent in favour of keeping
the Union, hoping that such a vote would induce the Centre to
take measures to protect them. As a result, Georgian atrocities
only increased. Ossetes began to be expelled from their villages
which, they said, were pillaged and burned with people still in
them. Conversely, the Georgian public was indignant over
instances of Ossetian atrocities, such as the burning alive of
four Georgian peasants on 18 March 1991. About 10,000 Georgian
civilians took refuge from the war in the inner regions of
Georgia. The Kremlin showed no willingness to intervene,
preoccupied as it was with other "hot spots" of the
disintegrating Soviet Union and with political rivalries in
Moscow. The fighting on the Georgian side was mostly done by
Vazha Adamia's Merab Kostava Society, allied to Gamsakhurdia.
Most of its membership consisted of Georgian residents of South
Ossetia. They were opposed by Ossetian self-defence forces.

After Gamsakhurdia's fall, the Military Council of Georgia
released Torez Kulumbegov from prison at the beginning of 1992.
This served as an invitation to dialogue to the South Ossetian
leaders. The latter, however, chose not to pursue a line of
compromise. In a referendum held in South Ossetia on 19 January
1992, boycotted by local Georgians, more than 90% of those taking
part voted to join Russia. The referendum had been initiated by a
group of South Ossetian deputies favouring the line of the former
party chief, Anatoli Chekhoev, that armed struggle was the only
way out. The North Ossetian authorities disagreed with the move
as unrealistic.(77) Among the
Russian experts, it evoked a mixed,
generally negative reaction. Galina Starovoytova, then adviser to
President Yeltsin on the question of nationalities and a champion
of minority rights, while admitting that it made things difficult
for Russia, still tended to see the South Ossetian referendum
("the people's choice") as a precedent for the solution of such
problems for the world community at large.(78) Political scientists
Emile Pain and Arkadi Popov, on the contrary, considered the
referendum as morally reprehensible (an attempt to take advantage
of the turmoil in Georgia), legally dubious (conducted under
martial law and not following the correct procedure) and
politically ineffective (if Russia supported it, it would be
criticized by the ex-Soviet republics who suspected Russia of
wanting to violate their territorial integrity; if it did not,
the referendum would be met with reproaches from Russian
hard-liners defending the "rights of the Russian-speaking
population" in the "near abroad").(79)

South Ossetia refused to enter into negotiations with the
new regime in Georgia until it pulled Georgian troops out of the
region and lifted the blockade. There was a certain lessening of
combat activity in the early months of 1992, explained by the
fact that Mkhedrioni and the National Guard had their hands tied
in Megrelia and parts of Abkhazia, fighting the Zviadists. In
mid-April, however, Georgian artillery started daily missile
attacks on the residential quarters of Tskhinvali.(80) A first
cease-fire was agreed in Tskhinvali on 13 May, only to break down
a few days later. On 20 May 1992, unidentified gunmen (Ossetes
had no doubt that they were Georgians) massacred a busload of
Ossetian refugees fleeing Tskhinvali near the Georgian village of
Kekhvi. All political contact was broken off and North Ossetia
cut the pipeline supplying Georgia with Russian gas.(81) A new
cease-fire in early June again broke down within a few days. Two
important factors then intervened to change the situation. One
was the North Ossetian factor. Another was the increasingly
important role played by the Confederation of Mountain Peoples of
the Caucasus. As the influx of refugees from South Ossetia and
the inner regions of Georgia grew, North Ossetia was forced to
intervene, pressing the Russian leadership to take steps towards
the resolution of the conflict. The North Ossetian leader,
Akhsarbek Galazov, disagreed with the "radical tendency" among
South Ossetian leaders (Head of Government Oleg Teziev and First
Deputy Chairman of Parliament Alan Chochiev) and generally acted
to defuse the conflict.

The Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus
(KGNK), set up at the third Congress of Mountain Peoples of the
Caucasus on 1-2 November 1991 (chairman: Musa Shanibov) and
successor to the Assembly of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus
(AGNK), acted as an unofficial parliament of peoples of the North
Caucasus and had its military formations drawn from the KGNK
member republics. On 13 June 1992, Shanibov brought an Abkhaz
KGNK battalion to Vladikavkaz, intending to send it to fight on
the side of South Ossetia. Galazov refused to let it travel on to
Tskhinvali.(82) A further
development of the conflict (as later in
Abkhazia) would threaten the involvement of the peoples of the
North Caucasus and destabilization throughout the whole region.

Towards the middle of June 1992, Russia was on the brink of
war with Georgia for South Ossetia. A number of Russian leaders,
including RF Supreme Soviet Chairman Ruslan Khasbulatov, Vice
President Alexander Rutskoi and Acting Premier Yegor Gaidar, made
strongly-worded statements on Georgian behaviour in South
Ossetia. Khasbulatov warned that if Georgia did not stop the
bloodshed, the Russian parliament would consider granting South
Ossetia's request to join Russia, while Rutskoi telephoned
Shevardnadze and threatened to bomb Tbilisi.(83) The less warlike
elements in the Russian elite pointed out that besides the
principle of self-determination (invoked by South Ossetia), a
principle of minimization of human suffering also had to be taken
into account: they argued that the suffering could only be
increased if, in retaliation for Georgia's "inhuman" siege of
Tskhinvali, Russia launched an all-out war against Georgia.(84)

On 22 June 1992, Yeltsin and Shevardnadze met in Dagomys
and, with North and South Ossetian representatives, signed the
Sochi agreement on a cease-fire and the deployment of joint
Russian, Georgian and Ossetian peacekeeping forces. These were
moved into the region on 14 July and the agreement has held
since. The South Ossetian demand for the establishment of treaty
relations between South Ossetia and Georgia was not accepted,
though the Ossetian-populated districts have remained out of
bounds for Georgia. The question of the status of South Ossetia
has not been solved to this day.

The overall consequences of the war were devastating:
according to Olga Vasilyeva, 93 villages (mostly Ossetian) were
completely burned down; most of the thousand Ossetes killed in
the war were civilians, only 100 among them members of the South
Ossetian self-defence forces.(85) The number of South Ossetian
refugees to North Ossetia varies according to different sources.
While some writers, like Vasilyeva, have cited a figure of up to
100,000 (presumably including those expelled from the inner
regions of Georgia - there were 160,000 Ossetes in the whole of
Georgia in 1979), a Russian general, Alexander Kotenkov, then
head of the provisional administration in the zone of the
Ossetian-Ingush conflict, estimated their number at 30,000 in
March 1993, plus another 7,000 Ossetes who became refugees from
the Prigorodny Raion of North Ossetia during the Ossetian-Ingush
conflict in autumn 1992.(86)
A traveller to the region speaks of
40,000 Ossetes now remaining in South Ossetia plus up to 7,000
from the inner regions of Georgia. Part of this population
periodically migrates from Tskhinvali to Vladikavkaz and back.(87)

Since July 1992, little has changed in South Ossetia, a land
that seems to have been forgotten by the outside world: no ties
with Georgia, and hence no supplies from there; almost no attempt
made (for lack of financial resources) to rebuild what has been
destroyed in the war; factories idle, with the population engaged
in subsistence farming. In September 1993, Ludvig Chibirov, a
colleague of North Ossetian leader Galazov, became Chairman of
the South Ossetian Supreme Soviet, later renamed State Nykhas
(Council of Elders); elections to that body held in March 1994
gave the South Ossetian Communist Party 19 seats out of 36.(88) In
October 1994, Shevardnadze admitted that the conflict in South
Ossetia had been the grossest mistake of the former Georgian
leadership, and diplomatic efforts to solve the refugee problem
were stepped up by the Georgian and South Ossetian sides.(89)